Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [95]
She had started to rise from her workdesk and had then thought better of it. Now she was perfectly composed. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘Well, when you tell him he will be.’
‘What is your business with the Firstmaster?’
‘It is with the Firstmaster,’ he said, making sure he sounded just haughty enough for her to feel able to put him in his place.
He wanted her relaxed and slightly off-guard. She would be a little less sceptical that way. It was probably overcautious of him He was probably overcompensating.
She looked almost smug and she accentuated her aristocratic drone. ‘He is far too busy to see anyone without an appointment.’
‘Even me?’
‘Even you.’
‘You have nothing to fear from our previous association,’ he said evenly. ‘You know that, of course.’
‘Of course I know that.’ It was a confident assertion, too confident to be a simple expression of trust.
‘Perhaps,’ Carnell said, sounding hopeful now rather than haughty, ‘I can make an appointment then?’
‘Not without telling me the nature of your business with him.’
‘Very well.’ Carnell lowered his voice discreetly, confidentially. ‘I didn’t want to embarrass the Firstmaster but he does owe me a rather substantial sum of money.’
‘Firstmaster Uvanov owes you money,’ she said, sounding sceptical.
Carnell could see that the scepticism was professional rather than genuine. ‘How can I put this? Would you remind him that it’s not necessary to reach the conclusion to know what the conclusion will be?’
‘You want me to tell him that? What does it mean?’
Carnell smiled. ‘Tell him that he risks nothing by paying me sooner rather than later.’
‘I don’t think I understand,’ she said, rather obviously trying to look as though she didn’t understand.
‘Firstmaster Uvanov will understand,’ he said. ‘Thank you for all your help. I do appreciate it.’
On his way out of the building Camel paused in the lobby to check the conditions and decide whether to wear his coat or carry it. When he was satisfied that Uvanov’s ponderous security man was not following him by mistake he went outside and summoned a robot-pull buggy to take him to the central service facility. The Voc told him, as it was required to do, that it was a long distance and would be expensive and that a flier would be quicker and cheaper. Carnell thanked it, paid and settled back in the seat. He had time to kill and none of his new enemies was likely to look for him in a robot-pull buggy even if they worked out where he was going.
Taren Capel waited for the return of his creations, which would confirm that his being was unique and true as he knew it to be. He was patient like all his kind. He had no concept of impatience. He could measure time and calculate its passage and estimate periods of action and inaction. But time had no meaning for him. It is only death which gives time meaning and only time gives life its fearful urgency. He waited patiently, impervious to the weakening cries of his experimental subjects.
Occasionally he took the power down again to the deepest dreaming, and set the nearest in control, and gave them the power to go beyond the power and release the next, and on and on.
He was patient but he found each dream was narrower and less powerful, and in each dream there were fewer reached to go beyond. He projected the dream and he knew that without the return, the power to be Taren Capel must be limited to those that were in his own image, separate power, not spread one to another but one controlled alone. Where were his creations, why did they not return?
He was patient and then he thought that the humans who looked like his creations could be turned into his creations. He had one brought to him. It almost was his creation.
Then he remembered: they were all his creations, his first weak attempts. What was needed was to strengthen them. He set up the equipment he had used to create himself and strapped the first of them into position.
Taren Capel was not impatient but he was re-factoring his options and solving his problems.
The Doctor was learning